Cards Cut

This article contains a short guide on how to edit your personal statement and create tension and suspense within your writing. For most potential students there are some clear reasons why they wish to embark on university. Writing the personal statement for university submissions is one of the most difficult, daunting tasks for any potential student. This article will offer insight into how you should build up tension and suspense and how to edit your personal statement - which is one area where students tend to overlook.

It is often said that personal statements are often autobiographical. This may well be true, because a wise maxim is “write about what you know.” And, if there is one thing we all know more about than anything else it is our own lives. Often students only write about the reasons why they wish to embark on a particular university course and many personal statements lack emotion, suspense, and tension. However, in a work of fact, emotion, is a key ingredient in successful personal statements. And, while students life’s may differ considerably from one other, we will each have known the full gamut of emotions. It is important when writing your personal statement that you convey a sense of place to your reader and the way to do that is with the five senses sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. It is all too easy to forget that scenes, which are indelibly etched on your own mind, will not be equally clear in the reader’s unless you make them so by your writing.

Tension is one of the second most important elements in writing, closely allied to suspense - the “what happens next” ingredient. The problem for many students is to try to condense the personal statement into 600 words. Obviously, the admission officer knows you only have this limited space, but nonetheless does judge you on the four minutes it takes to read your personal statement, if your personal statement includes tension and suspense - it is sure to be a winner. The secret to a good personal statement is not to give away too much to quickly, keep us guessing, hanging onto every word, thus building up tension and suspense. In order for there to be tension in your personal statement, there must be (or have been) something important at stake. Perhaps this was your family life or what you believe is your future. Perhaps the reason why you chose the course you wish to study. Whatever it is, by not divulging the outcome too soon, you will maintain the reader’s interest for that much longer. The following personal statement starts with a powerful suspense filling introduction:

“The prospect of helping people has driven me to fulfil many goals in life and this is truly my dream. Although it is great to have ambitions - I now want to translate my goals into reality. Becoming a nurse is a natural extension of my interest in medicine. Following graduation, I found myself advising investment bankers on the stock exchange, secretly desiring the opportunity of helping others overcome illness and promote health.”

In this personal statement introduction the reader is captured by the reason why they chose to become an investment banker. The author of this piece has demonstrated a powerful introduction, the style is simple, straightforward narrative. This personal statement will surely provide a valuable insight as to why she wishes to become a nurse.

In order for there to be tension in your personal statement, it will help to describe a highly charged incident, part of a particularly difficult period in your life. Whatever it was, you will maintain your reader’s interest for that much longer. The example below shows perfect tension and suspense build up:

“When the airmail letter arrived bearing an American stamp, I knew immediately, it was from my university with my degree results, and I tore it open as excitedly as if it were a birthday present. With trembling fingers, I took out the sheets of thin blue paper - and my heart started to pound as I began to read.”

Remember that tension, like all techniques, is merely another tool for making your writing more vivid and interesting to read. However, if you do use it, you must make it clear to your readers that the events you are describing have some relation to your study topic. If not, they will be confused, will have to re-read to make sense of it and may end up feeling irritated enough to stop reading.

The words and phases often used to build up tension include: intimidated; heart pounded; ferocity. Thus, tension and suspense is built up so that metaphorically, we hold out breath impelled to read on to find out “what happens next.”

How to edit your personal statement for university submission

When you’ve finished the actual writing, what do you do? Well, for a start, don’t be in a hurry to send off your personal statement before checking it. Few, if any, experienced writers never need to revise their work. Some do as they proceed but most will get their first Personal Statement draft down on paper without worrying too much how it’s written, and then, when it’s finished, go over it, pruning, polishing and tightening the general content. Therefore, this section is about how to edit the personal statement. It is advisable to check the following:

•That you haven’t been over-lavish with adjectives and adverbs. If you find you have, customer some of the former and, where possible, exchange the latter for stronger verbs.

•Threat you haven’t used clichés or hackneyed phrases bit have found fresh images always of describing yourself in the best possible light.

•Make sure you haven’t constantly used the same word in the same paragraph. This can be very irritating to the admissions officer and it only needs a little more thought to re-word or, very often, it can be omitted without affecting the sense. A thesaurus is useful for finding alternative words.

•Make sure your spelling and grammar and impeccable. If in doubt, consult a dictionary and/ or grammar book or ask someone whose knowledge of English your trust to read this through for you. Alternatively, send your personal statement to Get Into Uni Oxbridge editors http://www.getintouni.com who will edit this for you - to perfection.

•Make sure you haven’t used over long, unwieldy sentences or paragraphs. If you have you must break these up.

•That you’ve started your personal statement with a powerful introduction so this captures your reader’s attention - straight away.

•That your structure is easy to follow and that each sentence hooks into the next line.

•That you finish with your future career goals.

A key advantage is to use a professional to edit and improve your personal statement. If, however you are working in isolation and do not have that advantage, be wary of allowing family or friends to read and comment on it. For one thing, an outside will be objective and critical: they may be full of praise or go to the other extreme so far as style, at least, is concerned.

Long before you have reached the point of revision, however, it is important that you personal statement is intended as a selling tool for you to gain entry to your chosen university. If you wish to interest the reader it is important that you are your own critic. You will need to prune and polish, check grammar and spelling, take another look at your style: in fact, you may need to re-write your first few sentences to ensure your personal statement is powerful and will capture your readers attention instantly. A great way to help with this is to read sample personal statements these samples will give you a clear idea of how you may improve your opening.

Get Into Uni offers students personal statement editing and tips on how you can get an edge over the competition when applying for university. The website includes sample personal statements, a free writing guide, and lots of information to aid you in writing the personal statement.

End Note:

Your personal statement is crucial to your application. Planning your personal statement is therefore your fist step to success. Gain competitive advantage and order the best editing service on the web.

Copyright © 2004 Get Into Uni

Get Into Uni - © Elaine Millward(2004) is the founder of Get Into Uni Limited, personal statement Oxford educated editors. Get Into Uni qualified professional writers will edit your statement to perfection - ensuring your application is noticed. We recognise that you are unique and, therefore, you will receive customised advice from your personal writer. Increase your chances today!

http://www.getintouni.com

Writing papers and book reports has long been the bane of high school and college students’ existence. It seems that no matter how hard you work to stay caught up, there is always a paper due tomorrow. Using book notes to help get the ideas flowing can save you time, heartache, and the stress of getting a bad grade.

There are many styles and formats available now, but a book note typically includes a summary of a literary work, commentary on the subject matter and deeper meaning of the passages, and biographical information about the author. The best book notes are written by qualified people (i.e. a college degree in literature, or in the academic area the book note is covering). Most importantly, the book note you choose should be easy for you to use - after all, if the information is just as difficult to find in the book note as it is in the book, what’s the point?

When to use Book Notes

Book notes can help you out with more than just book reports. They provide valuable information you can use to write a paper about an author, philosopher, society, or culture. Let’s say you had to write a paper about nineteenth century Russian culture. You gather together a lot of information about what was going on politically, what kind of figures were popular, what the economy was like, etc. Imagine the authenticity you could add to your essay by including even a small part about Leo Tolstoy, a prominent Russian author from the nineteenth century.

Providing information connected to a specific person makes the essay much more enjoyable to read, and showcases your ability to provide breadth and depth of research. Naturally, it is not necessary for you to read all of Tolstoy’s works to know enough about him to include a piece in your essay. Book notes on one of his masterpieces will usually contain enough information for you to apply what you learn to your more general topic.

How to use a Book Note

The most important thing to remember about using book notes is they are not intended to be substitutes for reading the real book. You will miss out on the opportunity to read some of the greatest works of literature if you only read their book notes. Try reading the book note chapter by chapter after you read that chapter in the book. This helps confirm the ideas you come up with on your own, and will point out new ideas while the reading is still fresh in your mind.

Alternatively, you could also try reading the summary of each chapter before reading the chapter in the book. This will help direct your reading to find the things that are most important in each chapter, and will help you find new ideas that either agree or disagree with the ideas discussed in the book note.

When you sit down to write your paper, having already gone over the reading and the summary, you will have an arsenal of ideas on which you can rely to start writing the paper. Very rarely will you receive an essay assignment that is answered perfectly by the information in the book note, so you’ll have to pour some of your own thoughts into your paper.

Where to find Book Notes

The best things in life are not always free, but there are a lot of free resources available now online. The three best places I have found for book notes are SparkNotes.com, CliffNotes.com, and PinkMonkey.com. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages, so try each one out until you find the one that works best with your style.

About The Author

Nick Smith is a client account specialist with http://www.10xMarketing.com - More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. For software that lets you organize and annotate your book notes, check out http://www.gobinder.com/book-notes.aspx

nick10x@yahoo.com

Your story belongs to your main character. And because it’s his story, everything associated with that story is his. The goal is his, the problems are his, the conflict is his etc. And because the conflict will arise from a situation in his life, then he has to be the one to solve the conflict in the end.

Why does he have to do this?

For the ending to be satisfying and most importantly, believable.

If a major conflict is occurring in your life and you solve it, will you feel pleased with yourself? Won’t it boost your confidence and give you the strength to overcome anything? Will those feelings be aroused in you if your friend solved the conflict for you?

What if you were to tell that incident to someone, where you outlined all you had gone through and how you resolved the conflict? Wouldn’t they feel pleased with you too? Wouldn’t they think you are a strong individual?

It’s the same with your story. Conflicts that are solved by another character or something else, don’t have satisfying endings. When we become engrossed in the problems of the character and the character himself, we feel cheated when he doesn’t pull through. He disappoints us in the end if he doesn’t resolve his own problems.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let’s see an example….

Your character has just lost his job. Christmas is three weeks away.

What’s his conflict?
That he has to go home and tell his wife and kids they won’t be celebrating Christmas as planned.

What are the problems associated with this conflict?
He doesn’t want to let them down; he feels like a failure… etc.

How will the conflict be resolved?

1) By another character lending him the money? (Conflict resolved by another character.)

2) By winning the lottery? (Conflict resolved by something else.)

3) By taking on two jobs so his family can have the Christmas they’d planned or an even better Christmas? (Conflict resolved by the character.)

If the character takes option number three and resolves the conflict himself, it would be much more believable because that’s what’s most likely to happen in real life.

Winning the lottery is not too believable - it does happen but it’s a feeble way out in a short story.

Having someone lend him the money is not too believable either. Christmas is approaching. Who has the spare cash to lend at this time of the year? (Besides being another feeble way out)

Although you don’t see it in the brief description of the plot, in the story I have been building up my character to be a strong individual - a survivor who doesn’t give up without a fight. So taking the easy way out will not be believable of his personality either.

By having him take on two jobs and showing that he doesn’t give up without a fight, my ending reinforces all that I had been building up about this character.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t disappoint your readers. Allow your character to deal with his conflict himself.

About the author:

———————————————————————————-
Besides his passion for writing, Nick Vernon runs an online gift site where you will find gift information, articles and readers funny stories. Visit http://www.we-recommend.com

This year holds a record by the amount of the storms and hurricanes - there were more than 25 storms and more than 14 hurricanes, which hold their own names, and which ruined many houses, killed many people and brought many problems and afflictions to the world community.

Many companies became insolvent, others incurred enormous expenses; people lost their homes and families, communications were broken down too (including Miami International airport). Hurricane Wilma was the 3rd this year identified as a hurricane of the 5th category (the winds peed was more than 260 km/h) and damaged the most United States of America, Cuba and Mexico (USA declared that the damage from Wilma’s destructions can total 9 billion dollars). The approximate amount of deaths equals to 60 (USA - 35, Haiti - 12, Mexico - 8, Cuba - 4 and Jamaica - 1) . Commonly, strong hurricanes destroy the cities’ infrastructure, including power and water supply. Wilma was not the exclusion and it left more than 3 million people without power in Florida for 3 or 4 weeks.

This paper is devoted to the research of Wilma’s effect on the Florida power supply and its provider - Florida Power and Light company. This company belongs to FPL group as its subsidiary, which year revenues make up over $10 billion and operates within 26 states.

It’s not a secret for anybody that FPL incurred large expenses because Wilma destructed approximately 10 thousand concrete power poles from about 1 million, which were designed to “stand up to winds of 119 mph” , caused more than 2 hundred substations out of order and left 75 percent of FPL consumers without power (3.2 million people out of 4.2). The most affected counties are the following: Miami-Dade (over 950 thousand), Broward (over 860 thousand), Palm-Beach (over 660 thousand), Lee (over 190 thousand) and Collier (over 165 thousand). Other counties suffered too but not so significantly. For this reason FPL officials seriously discussed the possibility of removing power supply underground but this measure was recognized as economically inefficient because it can result in price growth on power supply for Florida population up to 50 percent. So underground infrastructure can not be taken seriously and FPL company claimed that they will analyze the situation and make a decision on improving the safety and the reliability of its service. In 2004 there was also a large amount of hurricanes and storms affected Florida’s power supply chain but Wilma’s destructions were the largest from the whole FPL’s history. FPL has a good experience of restoring its poles but this time it faced a huge problem. Nobody expected such damage from Wilma hurricane.

Restoration process

So how Florida Power and Light company dealt with the consequences of a hurricane?

Of course restoration works began immediately and among other steps there was a toll-free phone number establishment for receiving complains from the consumers. It is a very rational decision because 3 million people were interesting when they will have the opportunity to use their electrical appliances - refrigerators, microwave ovens, laundry washers, computers an so on. People did not even have the opportunity to charge their mobile phones. During the restoration process it was a common situation when people from the same street received electricity not on the same day because their houses used different substations and some people even became panic-stricken.

Another good decision adopted by FPL is developing a restoration map and placing it on their website. This map allowed people to find their county, get to know when the restoration works in their county will be finished and make a complaint if some lines were not restored on time for some reasons. But the one thing which FPL’s team may not taken into consideration that most of their clients do not have the opportunity to turn on their PC’s or notebooks and access FPL’s website via the Internet. There was other useful information on the website placed also - such as how to check if your house was not connected to the supply change while other houses down the street already connected.

The restoration works included the exposure of broken poles, wires, substations and removal of their malfunctions. Of course it took much time, efforts and costs but within 4 weeks and a half FPL finished restoration of its poles and substations, and now all its consumers have light in their houses.

Economic and social effects of hurricane Wilma on Florida Power and light company

FPL group reported its 3rd quarter earnings on 4th November, 2005. Many people and organizations (especially FPL’s investors) were waiting for this report because this report can include a part of expenditures related to the restoration works after hurricane Wilma. So FPL reported $339 million ($0.87 per share) of net income, including “net unrealized after-tax loss of $56 million associated with the mark-to-market effect of non-qualifying hedges.”. This loss decreased earnings per share from $1.01 down to $0.87. But company stated that hurricane’s resulted only $0.02 per share loss and that hurricane Wilma’s costs are not included in this quarter report. An interesting fact that the losses of FPL company can be much more significant because general accepted accounting principles allow to share losses within several periods and thus it would not be a great surprise that the 4th quarter 2005 and 1st (may be in 2nd too) 2006 earnings reports would contain million dollars of “net unrealized after-tax loss.”

Moreover, FPL can not calculate all the expenditures concerned with hurricane Wilma and its destructions so fast (within a month or even a quarter). Unofficially, restoration costs assessed up to $200 million. Nevertheless, the 3rd quarter results in 2005 are better than the same of 2004 and company’s CEO claims that the FPL group’s earnings meet the satisfaction criteria. The CEO presumes that despite such losses the FPL group will fulfill the plan and its earnings will reach $2.5 per share for the year 2005. Additionally, 3rd quarter results are better than 2nd quarter and company relates it to favorable weather conditions.

So FPL’s investors still do not know how much losses caused hurricane Wilma and how it will affect their income this year. But the fact is that FPL’s emergency fund was completely exhausted within the period. Of course company will try to fulfill the expenditures by including some fee into their consumers’ accounts, receiving some insurance money or receiving some State subsidy from the government. Of course all these events make certain instability on the main world stock exchanges.

Moreover, these events caused many protests, investigations and demands for payments. Some people insist that FPL can not fulfill its social liabilities and provide quality power supply and thus there were suggestions to break FPL’s monopoly on the Florida market; politicians offer to check other vital industries if they are ready to face such trials as FPL did. So on account of a serious outage FPL is under a strong pressure from the side of society, investors and the government now.

People sue the company and their amount grows from day to day. Consequently if the court will decide that FPL has to compensate damages and losses to the plaintiffs it, probably, can become bankrupt because if all those people and organizations suffered from the outages would bring an action against the FPL the amount of refunds can be estimated in billions. The possibility of numerous suits is quite high because the main newspapers and reporters unleashed a scandal already and the society is anxious about this issue. Many people complained that FPL did not adequately response to their appeals during the year - many poles were not in perfect condition and needed a repairing and thus there could much less damage. Of course it is not fair to consider FPL to be completely liable for enormous outage. But it is the fact that company neglected several complaints and is responsible for the damage which could be avoided.

From the report it is known that about 10 thousand poles were damaged out of 1 million and this caused 75 percent outage. So it can be concluded that the most important poles were damaged while this is intolerable. I think that the most important elements of infrastructure must be fortified and stable enough because power supply is vital for modern society - hospitals, airports, factories, schools etc can not operate without power supply.
Obviously, FPL was not ready to face such a disaster as Wilma hurricane, which forced the company’s business on the knees, and it has to think about such consequences and make necessary decisions to avoid future problems. The society rightly expects serious actions to be taken from Florida Power and Light company, and no break-power in future.

Aaron is a senior writer at Custom Essay Writing Network. He is an experienced custom essay writer and will be glad to share his experience of custom essay writing with you.

When I took composition classes in college, I often became
frustrated with all the reading I had to do, story after story
after story, many times thousands of pages per assignment. Yet
as we discussed the stories and what made them interesting or
what didn’t, I was learning how to write. Even today, as I read
and review, I learn more about what makes a good story and what
doesn’t.

I used the reading, discussion, and then writing idea when I
taught, too. I tried to highlight one or two concepts per story,
then had the students write something using those concepts and
any others we had already covered. First, though came reading
and reading and reading.

As I read the September, 2005, issue of The Writer, I
discovered an article by Erika Dreifus titled “Learning
short-story writing by example.” She agrees with my university
professors and me: “We learn by reading closely and reading as
writers - attending to the ways others employ the elements of
fiction: setting, plot, character, theme, and so on.”

So where can a person find short stories to study, ones that
will help learn correct story writing? Of course books of short
stories are found in all book stores. In fact Holly Jahangiri
and I have a collection of short stories for sale at Amazon.com
or Barnes and Nobles. Plus many bookstores connected to colleges
have anthologies for sale. If someone couldn’t afford to buy an
anthology or collection, used bookstores or libraries carry them.

Web sites can be found that have stories and advice for writers.
The Internet is an interesting and impressive source. Some
magazines still publish short stories. Searching in cyber space
will locate many that do.

The best help found in reading, though, is to read
well-written short stories, and read, read, read.

****

Sources:

1. Dreifus, Erika, “Learning short-story writing by example,”
The Writer, September 2005. 2. Notes and lesson plans by
Vivian Zabel

Every technical writer or documentation manager should ask the following questions before authorizing a help file project because the answers will have a direct impact on the final cost of the help project:

1) What kind of help file you need? HTML help? Web help? Flash help? Java help? Oracle help? Winhelp?

2) How many topics will there be? What will be the average length of an average topic?

3) What is the format of the source files (if any)? MS Word? FrameMaker? PDF? XML? Other help projects? etc.

4) Or, do you need to have the source files created from scratch?

5) Do you need any “browser sequences” (RoboHelp)? How many?

6) Will you need any conditional text?

7) Is this going to be a context-sensitive help file? If so, who will generate the MAP IDs? The help-file author or the engineers in the development department?

Do you need any multi-media components (video clips, sound files, Flash clips, etc.) as part of your help file?

9) Do you need a hardcopy version of your help file? Is it going to be printed at a commercial printer?

********* RoboHelp vs. Flare

Let me also remind all technical writers and managers out there that RoboHelp, arguably the most widely used help file editor within the last ten years, is probably not going to be around for much longer according to insistent industry-insider rumors.

Adobe still has a product page devoted to RoboHelp X5 but you need to look hard to find it: http://www.adobe.com/products/robohelp/

I’ve read that the core engineers who wrote much of the original RoboHelp code have now joined a company called MadCap Software (http://www.madcapsoftware.com/).

Their new product FLARE is supposed to replace RoboHelp in the near future, or at least that’s the latest buzz as I write these lines in June 2006.

So if you are a technical writer or a doc manager, you may want to make your own research whether to continue with RoboHelp or take a test drive with the new Flare.

Free Flare trial download is available at http://www.madcapsoftware.com/downloads/flaretrial.asp

————————————————-

Ugur Akinci, Ph.D. is a Creative Copywriter, Editor, an experienced and award-winning Technical Communicator specializing in fundraising packages, direct sales copy, web content, press releases. movie reviews and hi-tech documentation.

He has worked as a Technical Writer for Fortune 100 companies for the last 7 years.

You can reach him at writer111@gmail.com for a FREE consultation on all your copywriting needs or visit his official web site http://www.writer111.com.